22
votes
How many syllables does Chinese have?
I took the CEDICT file and wrote a script on it. The file has 113k dictionary entries, so it covers a very large portion of the Chinese vocabulary.
There are 1522 different pinyin syllables in CEDICT, ...
- 7,148
22
votes
Accepted
Why 你在笑什么？, why not 你笑在什么？
「在」in「你在笑什麽」is not equivalent to English at in what are you laughing at?. To demonstrate by analogy:
你在吃什麽 - what are you eating?
你在做什麽 - what are you doing?
「在」is actually equivalent to the suffix -...
- 21.4k
19
votes
Accepted
"Baby" vs "宝贝" - coincidence?
Interesting, but this is a coincidence.
Baby comes from a reduplicated Proto-Germanic root *bō-, which is cognate to English boy, appended with a diminutive suffix -y.
寶貝 comes from the meaning rare/...
- 21.4k
16
votes
Why is the Pinyin for 波 bo1 not buo1? And why is 多 duo1 instead of do1?
For all practical purposes, you can think of this as a spelling convention. The finals are pronounced the same, even if all finals are to some extent influenced by the preceding initial.
In Pinyin, ...
- 3,000
15
votes
Accepted
Why there is no 的 after 你 in 你国家的医院好吗?
This question is really about: " when can we omit the possessive 的 "
的 1.(adjective suffix):
For example:
强大勇敢 (strong and brave)
强大勇敢的人 (strong and brave man)
You cannot omit the ...
- 74k
12
votes
Accepted
Why can't 去 or 回来 be used with 在 or 正在 to become progressive
The answer is "habit".
Because we don't write or talk in that way.
For example, both 肥 and 胖 mean "fat".
We call a fat person as 胖子.
肥子 is not usual because we don't have the habit.
He is going to ...
- 1,974
12
votes
Accepted
Is this Chinese and what is the meaning: 阿ㄘㄟˊ
It is Amis／Pangcah (阿美族語), the language of one of the Taiwanese aborigines (台灣原住民).
阿ㄘㄟˊ ( ā céi ) means "ridiculous; crazy; unreasonable; nonsense; goofy; outrageous; nuts".
阿ㄘㄟˊ: You are nuts!
...
- 1,974
11
votes
How many syllables does Chinese have?
As Maroon points out in a comment, you have to say which dialect you are asking about. This answer is for Standard Chinese, aka Mandarin.
It also depends on what sort of stuff you include. Counting ...
- 4,335
11
votes
Accepted
Bigrams ending in third tone where first syllable is second tone vs. third tone
There have been conflicting claims on whether the second tone and the "raised third tone" are distinct, but according to Jerry Norman's 1988 book, Chinese, "Perceptual tests done by Dreher and Lee (...
- 4,335
11
votes
Accepted
Why is 儿 in different positions in "儿子" and "女儿"?
This is an interesting question, because it allows us to look at how words are formed in modern Chinese.
The Characters
Both 兒 and 子 meant "child" or "son" in ancient Chinese. 兒 was more specific, ...
- 1,837
11
votes
Accepted
Are `sh` and `x` really different phonemes, or just different realizations of the same phoneme?
This is a classic problem with defining phonemes. Looking for "complementary distribution" of sounds does not uniquely determine a phonological analysis. In Mandarin (I'll use pinyin here), ...
- 6,735
10
votes
Accepted
Could you please tell me what these characters are?
柏林
Berlin (the capital of Germany)
快速提升中文程度的方法：
1. 初級者多看中文文章。
2. 中級者多寫中文文章。
3. 高級者多用中文思考。
所以，除了初學者可能有困難外，建議大家多用中文問答。
- 1,974
10
votes
Accepted
Difference between 小吃 and 零食
小吃: snack. Examples: steam bun, hot dog, baked sweet potato (most street food stall's cooked food are considered 小吃.) There are also cold served 小吃 like cold cut meat or cheese on cracker (mostly ...
- 74k
9
votes
Accepted
Ways to politely insult somebody's intelligence in Mandarin?
I don't know if there is a way to politely insult someone's intellect, that almost seems like an oxymoron to me.
糊涂 (silly) is the only expression I can think of that doesn't stigmatize the ...
- 7,148
9
votes
Accepted
What is the Mandarin equivalent of Cantonese's 麻麻地 (so-so)?
麻麻地 (Cantonese)
麻麻地 http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/1503/
so-so; not too good, not too bad; ho-hum; middling.
Example: 佢嘅英文麻麻地 (his English is just so-so)
普通/ 普普通通
...
- 74k
9
votes
Accepted
Why is there such a difference between "first name" and "last name"?
你的姓是什么? is not a common way to ask someone's last name.
The more common way is :
"Title +贵姓?"
"你姓什么?" (the noun '姓' here is acting like a verb (is family-named)
In the past, most people in ...
- 74k
8
votes
Resources for learning Mandarin Chinese
Social Media
Discord
30 Days of Chinese is for sharing your Chinese studies.
Reddit r/ChineseLanguage
Facebook
Business Chinese Learning
CCTV中文 Chinese news.
Chinese Class 101
CRI Learn Chinese
...
8
votes
Tense and use of 了
There are two main usages of 了, as an aspect marker and as a modal particle.
Aspect marker: expresses completion of an action
In this case 了 can be used to produce a past tense. It typically follows ...
- 5,432
8
votes
Accepted
Difference between 孩子 and 儿童 (and 孩童，少儿，...)
In most cases, they are not interchangeable. In my experience, "儿童" emphasizes on age, but "孩子" emphasizes on relationship.
When you are talking about a part of the population, "儿童" is more formal ...
- 827
8
votes
Accepted
How to pronounce 廿卅卌 in Chinese?
In most Cantonese speakers I know, 廿 is still a colloquial item of vocabulary, replaced with 二十 in usual formal writing; but 廿 remains a very common alternative, for counting as well as enumerating. ...
- 6,198
8
votes
Mandarin: when is it okay to use only 點 instead of 一點?
點 「吃點東西吧！」、「一點小事別在意！」
一點 「也少盡一點子心哪。」
一點點 「祇有一點點大。」
一點兒 「大意一點兒」
In most cases these are interchangeable.
We do not omit 一, if there is no verb, adjective or adverb in front of it.
For example, ...
- 1,501
8
votes
Accepted
Which is more common in Mandarin: 四處 or 周圍?
四處 is better than 周圍 in this case. However, I think you can consider 到處.
The house will have your books everywhere.
這房子將到處都有你的書。
From Google Translate:
everywhere 副詞
到處
everywhere, ...
- 1,463
8
votes
What is the meaning of 機歪?
機車 and 機歪 are indecent words. As time changes, the meanings are already different. The following is one of them.
The 機歪 refers to the female genitalia - 膣屄 (cunt). The Hokkien pronunciation is tsi-...
- 1,404
8
votes
"Baby" vs "宝贝" - coincidence?
They are not etymologically related as other posters have noted, but it might not be a pure coincidence.
Many people have noted that words like "mama" and "papa" are similar across language families ...
- 81
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible